Staff members with discipline Humanities, Multidisciplinary
Academia develops at the interface of different fields. This is one reason why the University of Groningen is home to a wide range of fields, each with a great number of subject specialists. The overview below, which is based on a standard categorization of fields, will help you find the right expert for each field. If you cannot find the expert you are looking for in this list, try searching via a related field or faculty; you may find him or her there.


Syrian diasporic communities in Europe
Migration studies



Vanessa develops and teaches various object-based, hands-on and experiential courses at the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Medical Sciences at the University of Groningen.
In the BA1course Paint to Pixel, taught together with prof. dr. Ann-Sophie Lehmann, we introduce art history students to artists’ materials and techniques by the means of object- and practice-based pedagogy. The students experience materials and techniques hands-on during excursions to the workshops of Minerva Art academy, as well as in the seminars and the assignments (historical reconstructions).
In the interdisciplinary elective course Under the Skin, which I developed together with pedagogue and educator Margreet Smit, we enhance the reflective potential of second year medical students by drawing on teaching methods from philosophy, psychology, (art) history and arts, and crafts. Making (e.g. materializing their ongoing explorations and reflections in an art-based form) was our main didactic method to create space for reflection.
Together with visual artist and researcher Henrike Scholten I designed and taught the elective course Deconstructing Instructions that investigates and reflects critically on the art academy’s history. Using a historically informed, experimental and practice-based pedagogic approach, the 16-week course challenged 23 undergraduate art students to engage with the material and didactic heritage of the art academy.








My research focuses on non-anthropocentric conceptualizations of animality and general nonhumanity in Italian modernist literature. I build on Herman’s (2011) remodelling of Modernism through the lens of Enactivism, but instead of looking at themes and contents, I prefer to study the texts through a Neo-Formalist perspective (Levine 2015), meaning that the core of my studies points at the formal narrative innovations produced by Italian Modernism. The aim is to identify the forms used to represent nonhumanity and its relationship with humanity, so to offer new tools to represent them in today’s literature. Accordingly, I employ theories drawn from Posthumanism, Ecocriticism, Animal Studies and New Materialism, so to combine an innovative take on forms and an undertheorized topic such as nonhumanity in Italian literature.
The authors I currently have under examination are Carlo Emilio Gadda and Luigi Pirandello.



Cultural history

Mediaeval History; Cultural and Religious History; Human-Animal Studies; Critical Animal Studies; Posthumanism; Cultural Heritage; Mediaevalisms in Videogames
Education
Coordination of the Dutch Studies programme at the Faculty of Arts.

Alberto Godioli is Associate Professor in European Culture and Literature at the University of Groningen, and Programme Director of the Netherlands Research School for Literary Studies (OSL). He obtained his PhD in 2012 from the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa; from 2013 to 2015 he was a Newton International Fellow at the University of Edinburgh.
His main research field is humor and satire across media. He has authored the monographs Laughter from Realism to Modernism (Oxford: Legenda / Routledge, 2015) and La scemenza del mondo (Pisa: ETS, 2011, Edinburgh Gadda First Prize), as well as several articles and book chapters on theories and practices of humor from the 18th century to the present.
His current work focuses on humor and free speech jurisprudence, in dialogue with stakeholders such as Columbia Global Freedom of Expression and Cartoonists' Rights Network International. In 2021 he was awarded an NWO Vidi Grant for his project 'Humor in Court' (original title 'Forensic Humor Analysis', 2022-2027). This interdisciplinary project aims to set the basis for a fairer, more consistent approach to humor in legal cases concerning freedom of expression, based on insights coming from humanities-based humor research.
Alberto is also the founder and co-director of the Forum for Humor and the Law (ForHum) and of the OSL research group Literature, Law and Society, as well as the Principal Investigator of the NETIAS Constructive Advanced Thinking project 'Cartoons in Court' (main host: Institute for Advanced Study CEU Budapest, 2020-2023). His research areas also include Modernism, Law and Literature, Posthumanism, Narrative Theory and Cognitive Literary Studies.






Shakespeare, Presentism & Performance
Ethnic and Racial Studies




Essential Medicines
Human rights (Right to Health)
Universal access to basic health care (Access to Essential Medicines)
Essential Medicines for Reproductive Health
National Pharmaceutical Policies in developing countries
WHO, UN agencies





Keywords: digital methods, content moderation, online extremism, conflict monitoring

Interview for the Materialized Identies Project: https://www.materializedidentities.com/single-post/2017/08/02/Interview-with-Ann-Sophie-Lehmann

English for Academic Purposes
English proficiency
Presentation skills
Writing skills
Holds: UTQ

She holds a Bachelor's Degree in Spanish: Language and Literatures from the University of Alicante and a Master's Degree in Art, Literature and Culture from the Autonomous University of Madrid. In 2016, she was awarded a Collaboration Grant by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport to conduct a study about the limits of fiction in literature. She obtained her PhD in Art, Literature and Culture in 2020 from the Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain) (Cum Laude Distinction and International Mention). Her research was funded from 2017 to 2020 with a research grant provided by the José Luis de Oriol-Catalina de Urquijo Foundation. Gemma carries out multidisciplinary research in Humanities, Literary Theory, Cognitive Sciences, and Communication.
In addition, she is a member of the Communication [Poetics and Rhetoric] Research Group (C [P y R]) and a foundational member of the Spanish Society of Rhetoric [Se-Ret].




My PhD project focuses on digital democratic innovations and their potential for increased citizens’ participation, deliberation and influence on political decision-making. In particular, I am interested in investigating the downfalls and gaps in current designs of digital participation systems to identify opportunities for their improvement, thus making democratic innovations more inclusive, deliberative, and empowering.



1) The earthquake region Groningen: disaster chaplaincy; 2) UMCG: addressing the spiritual dimension in hospital; 3) Student internship project: connecting different organizational levels by meaningful exchanges; 4) low literacy and meaning making in east Groningen; 5) Grief, trauma and religion/spirituality in Mental Health Care





I'm Principal Investigator of the ERC Starting Grant project GOLEM (Graphs and Ontologies for Literary Evolution Models).
I'm also a member of the scientific advisory board of OPERAS (the Research Infrastructure supporting open scholarly communication in the social sciences and humanities in the European Research Area) and Vice President of IGEL (the International Society of the Empirical Study of Literature).


- Meaning-in-Life
- Existential-experiential psychotherapy
- Attachment, loss & trauma
- Patient-therapist relationship
- Psychotherapeutic Patient-care
- Education and Supervision for PhD's, Clinical Psychologists, Psychotherapists, and Doctors in training

see also http://www.rug.nl/news-and-events/people-perspectives/inbeeld/mpopovic





Social Media
App Studies
Media Theory



Colonial America
The American Revolution
The Early American Republic
The US South
The early modern Atlantic World
Ethnicity, national identity, and race

His research deals primarily with the "Humanities", "Social Sciences", "Communication", "Computational Literary Studies", "Cultural Analytics" and "Technology", and the notions of "Culture, Literature and Crisis" from a multidisciplinary transnational perspective. He is an expert on "Cultural Narratives" and "Conceptual Metaphors". He carries out multidisciplinary research with particular emphasis on Digital Humanities, Artificial Intelligence, University Innovation, Data Science, Applied Physics, Social Sciences and Cognitive Sciences.
Professor Valdivia is a reviewer and editor of more than a dozen international top scientific journals and book series; the leading researcher of ConnectU in the Erasmus+ INNOVALAB project (European Commission) and an expert reviewer and independent rapporteur of European Commission research projects, among many other international scientific activities and recognitions (see CV). Besides, he regularly advises governments worldwide on Research, Educational Innovation, Higher Education, Science, Technology and Social Affairs.
From 2014 to 2018, Valdivia was President of the Steering Committee of the H2020 European Commission Excellent Science Marie Curie RISE project "Cultural Narratives of Crisis and Renewal (CRIC)" project; from 2016 to 2018 he was Director of the "Research Centre Arts in Society" (AiS University of Groningen), and he founded, in 2019, the "Research Centre for the Study of Democratic Cultures and Politics" (DemCP University of Groningen). From 2017 to 2018, Valdivia was Finance Officer CLLiP Programmes (Cultures, Literatures, Linguistics, Politics). In 2018, Prof. Dr Pablo Valdivia was awarded "Lecturer of the Year" Faculty of Arts (University of Groningen). From 2020 to 2022, Professor Valdivia was a Fellow in University Innovation at LASPAU (affiliated with Harvard University). In 2022, LASPAU (affiliated with Harvard University) received the PIEoneer Global Award for the Best Public/Private Partnership under the Program "Innovation in Teaching" to which Professor Valdivia contributed throughout his LASPAU Fellowship.
Currently, Valdivia supervises 13 PhD and 3 Postdoc research projects.
IMPORTANT!! I DO NOT ACCEPT NEW PHD CANDIDATES. MY SUPERVISION CAPACITY IS FULLY BOOKED FOR 2023 AND 2024! PLEASE, DO NOT CONTACT ME IF YOU WANT TO DO A PHD WITH ME UNTIL SEPTEMBER 2025! THANKS FOR YOUR COLLABORATION!!!
Current PhD Supervision
PhD Candidate Melissa Luypaers, 'Humor, Discrimination and Free Speech Jurisprudence: A Law-and-Humanities Approach'. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor and Dr Alberto Godioli daily supervisor.
PhD Candidate Bianca Ramírez, ‘Yo sentía que no estábamos solos. Sensorial Perception and its Role in the Experience of Former Detenidos-Desaparecidos’. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor, Dr Florian Lippert, Dr Konstantin Mierau and Dr Ksenia Robbe daily supervisors.
PhD Candidate Alessandro di Laurentis, ‘Personaggio, interiorita e tragico nelle novelle di Tozzi e Pirandello’. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor and Dr Alberto Godioli daily supervisor.
PhD Candidate Beer Prakken, 'Not Just a Joke: On Humour, Polarisation and Responsibility'. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia and Professor Dr Bart Streumer main supervisors, Dr Daphne Brandenburg and Dr Alberto Godioli daily supervisors.
PhD Candidate María Isabel Marín, 'Can an AI-Enabled System Help Us Understand How Cultural Narratives Are Configured and How Do They Prime Social Mobilization? A Machine Learning Model for Automatic Detection of the Regime(s) of Conceptual Metaphor'. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor and Dr Macr Esteve del Valle daily supervisor.
PhD Candidate Teun Joshua Brandt, 'Symbiotic Narratives: Contested Agencies in Scientific and Literary Accounts of Human Holobiants'. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor, Dr Florian Lippert, Dr Vera Alexander and Dr Fred Keijzer daily supervisors.
PhD Candidate Rosmery-Ann Boegeholz, ‘The ‘Mirror Syndrome’ as a response to the Beauty Influencers on Instagram: Problems and Effects of the excessive use of images by young university women’. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor and Dr Marc Esteve del Valle and Dr Javier Muñoz Basols daily supervisors.
PhD Candidate Juan Gallego Benot, 'How did rhetorical invention in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation shape a conflicting idea of Modernity? An analysis of the discursive construction of a new European society'. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia and Professor Dr Tomás Albaladejo main supervisors and Dr Alberto Godioli daily supervisor.
PhD Candidate Gonzalo Albornoz, ‘Fictional Representations of Law, Legality and Justice in Popular Mass Media and the Construction of Legal Knowledge by Key Communities in the Prison Environment’. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor and Dr Konstantin Mierau daily supervisor.
PhD Candidate Elizabeth Duarte, ‘Twittering for Peace? The Construction of Meaning and Otherness in Digital Media representations of the Colombian Peace Process’. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor and Dr Konstantin Mierau daily supervisor.
PhD Candidate Rose Smith, ‘Identifying the Role of Museums in Central European Post-Communist Nations in the Construction of the Global Memory of Communism’. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor and Dr Ksenia Robbe daily supervisor.
PhD Candidate Klára Kosova, ‘The Role of Economic Elites in the Foreign Policy-Making Process: The Case of Bulgaria’. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor and Dr Lisa Gaufman daily supervisor.
PhD Candidate Leonardo Arriagada, ‘CG-Art. An aesthetic discussion of the relationship between artistic creativity and computation’. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor, Dr Florian Lippert and Dr Alberto Godioli daily supervisors.
Current Post-Doc Supervision
Dr Matteo Fiori, 'Humour in Court' (NWO VIDI Grant, 2022-2027, PI Dr Alberto Godioli). Prof Dr Pablo Valdivia and Dr Alberto Godioli supervisors.
Dr Jennifer Young, 'Humour in Court (NWO VIDI Grant, 2022-2027, PI Dr Alberto Godioli). Prof Dr Pablo Valdivia and Dr Alberto Godioli supervisors.
Dr Dimitris Soudias, 'Welfare Visions 2.0: Future-Making Practices in the Social Economies of Amsterdam, Athens and Berlin'. Prof Dr Pablo Valdivia and Dr Florian Lippert supervisors.
Completed PhD Supervision and Postdoc
PhD Ruby de Vos, ‘Living with Toxicity: Mapping the Toxic in Contemporary Culture’. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor and Dr Vera Alexander daily supervisor.
PhD Judith Jansma, ‘From Submission to Soumission: Populists’ perspectives on culture’. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor, Professor Dr Lars Rensmann and Dr Alberto Godioli daily supervisors.
PhD Juan del Valle, ‘Imagining the Unpredictable: Communication, Power and Technology in José Ricardo Morales’ Transnational Theatre’. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor and Dr Konstantin Mierau daily supervisor.
PhD Cristian Crusat, ‘La construction de la biographie imaginaire’. Professor Ieme van der Poel (University of Amsterdam) and Dr Pablo Valdivia (University of Amsterdam) co-supervisors.
PhD David Martínez Antón, ‘La teoría de la transducción literaria. Hacia una teoría dialógica de la obra literaria’. Professor Tomás Albaladejo (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) and Dr Pablo Valdivia (University of Amsterdam) co-supervisors.
Dr Omar Alcántara, 'Adolescence, Gender and Violence in the Bildungsroman and the Road movies: from Goethe to Alfonso Cuarón'. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor.

Her research is focused on cognitive approaches to children's literature. Her PhD was on empathy, ethics and justice construction children's war literature. Her current project is on the impact and complexity of contrasting truth narratives in children's literature. She has presented her research at many international conferences and through several peer reviewed publications.

His main research interests lie in contemporary (music) theatre, socio-political, activist forms of performance, exile and post-migration. He also works as a freelance theatre critic. Between 2012 and 2014, he received three consecutive fellowships in Turkey to conduct his postdoc research, “Post-Migration in Performance”, mainly focusing on the Turkish and Kurdish diaspora in Europe. He is currently preparing a new research project, under the heading, "European Networks for Performing Artists in Exile and Activism".
In his current research, he looks at the work of Turkish and Kurdish artists who collaborate with European ensembles or who work against censorship practices in Turkey to address socio-cultural issues like exilic life, political resistance, identity and commoration through theatre performances. He also has widely published on intermedial aesthetic strategies of sound, voice and aurality in theatre and interactive installation art.



Human Cognition
Reflective Imagination
Behavioral Adaptation
Ecological Humanities
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